Lobbying in the Land of Enchantment: Special Interests and their Hired Guns

It's finally out.... the Common Cause "Connect the Dots Report" on lobbyists that I've been working on for months.  It's available on Common Cause New Mexico's web site at commoncause.org/nm. Follow the links there for the whole report.  It answers the question: how much influence do these hired guns-- their clients, their contributions and their generous entertaining --have on the actual outcome of legislation. 

    We look at four examples involving the clout of oil and gas, agribusiness, bankers, trial lawyers and New Mexico spaceport lobbyists. 

    Here are a few tidbits:

• Six top lobbyists in the NM legislature have 20 or more clients
• 26 former legislators are now lobbyists
• Lobbyist have spent three-quarters of a million dollars feeding, entertaining, and giving gifts to candidates for state office, over the past year and a half
• Representatives opposing a bill to regulate oil and gas operations received three and one half times more contributions than those voting for it
• Two thirds of oil and gas contributions to legislators come from companies based outside New Mexico
• Special interests representing bankers and lawyers spent heavily on key committee members to block legislation over several years.

Many thanks to Viki Harrison, Jarrett HInes-Kay and Jonas Armstrong who all worked on this. 

 

Comments

[Joel]

Great report, Dede.

The one section that is weak is recommendations. As long as money plays any role in politics, we'll be making decisions according to who profits in the short-term rather than according to what is best for the state in the long-term. Trying to regulate money is almost impossible, since it arrives in many forms-- campaign contributions, gifts, sweetheart deals, employment later on... the list is endless.

Our real protection against corruption is to ensure that everyone receives genuinely proportional representation. That means changing the character of the legislature by public finance of campaigns and by making the Lege a job that pays a decent salary. It means training people who are poor and disadvantaged to serve in public office. And above all, it means affirming the fact that we all do best when we act to help one another than when we fight for scraps.